Logs don’t lie: Which tech execs have the White House’s ear?

White House visitor logs show us which tech executives, lobbyists, and public …

Who has the ear of the White House when it comes to tech issues? Judging from the White House visitor logs, President Obama and his team have a soft spot for FCC Chair Julius Genachowski, who visited 48 times between June and September. Not that it was all business; Genachowski checked in to use the White House bowling alley and to attend a poetry reading.

But when it comes to tech executives from the private sector, Google and Microsoft have both done well at getting into the White House. Former Microsoft boss Bill Gates even snared an intimate audience with President Obama back in March 2009 when only three other people were present. Steve Ballmer made three visits over two days to members of the Obama technology team. And Microsoft exec Craig Mundie put in an appearance.

Not to be outdone, the Googlers dropped by too. Alan Davidson, the company's chief lobbyist, stopped by the White House in March. Vint Cerf had an appointment with US CTO Aneesh Chopra in September. Google CEO Eric Schmidt was at the White House four times in 2009, and though he managed two visits with the POTUS, both were in larger groups than the Gates get-together. (Google's former top policy wonk, Andrew McLaughlin, is now a key player in the executive branch tech team.)

Mashups and meetings

This look inside the White House comes courtesy of the Obama administration, which (eventually) released its visitor logs to the public after public pressure from good government groups. The Sunlight Foundation, which promotes transparency in government, has done a nice job of making the raw data accessible and searchable online, and Ars Technica ran through the visitor logs to see who was visiting President Obama's senior technology staffers.

Many of the visitors were other government technology people, such as Casey Coleman (CIO of the General Services Administration) and Gopal Khanna (CIO for the state of Minnesota). Some were executives, like Rod Beckstrom, the head of ICANN. But more interesting were the lobbyists, think tankers, and public interest personalities who attended meetings with various technology policy staff members.

Free Press and Public Knowledge, two groups that have learned to "punch above their weight" in DC, have also done well at the White House—no surprise, really, given Obama's early tech picks like Genachowski and Susan Crawford. Public Knowledge lawyer Harold Feld, who has been mixing it up with the cable industry lately over Selectable Output Control (SOC), visited twice. Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge's president, also had two separate meetings. Josh Silver of Free Press stopped by one time in July.

Robert Atkinson, an Obama transition team member and head of the ITIF think tank, paid a visit. So did Michael Calabrese, who does plenty of work with wireless networks and white space devices over at the New America Foundation (where Eric Schmidt of Google is currently Chairman).

Lobbyists are more difficult to identify—many have a low profile outside of DC—but a pair stood out. Alan Davidson of Google made a visit in March 2009, while Skype's Christopher Libertelli visited in September (Libertelli has been flogging the "wireless network neutrality" issue hard out of concern that Skype is being blocked by wireless operators). Executives and lobbyists from trade groups like the RIAA, NCTA, MPAA, etc. weren't in evidence, nor could we identify top lobbyists from the large telco and cable providers. (Also not attending: anyone from Apple.)

But we did identify Joichi Ito, a Creative Commons board member. And there were two visits by one Paul Hewson—though we hope he was there to promote aid to Africa and not his execrable tech policy ideas.

Transparency for everyone

The data is of limited value in drawing conclusions about policy; listening to someone doesn't mean you agree with them or that their views will come to dictate policy. But it is clear that groups like Free Press, Public Knowledge, and Creative Commons have a willing audience inside the White House. It's also clear that Obama's basketball buddy, Genachowski, enjoys a good working relationship with the White House (and is a true Renaissance man; it's not every FCC Chairman who can pivot from network neutrality to the bowling alley and then to a bit of iambic pentameter).

Perhaps we should put that last paragraph in the past tense, however. Such groups had the ear of the White House. The visitor logs at this point only extend through October 2009, and at the end of October senior tech policy advisor Susan Crawford left the administration to return to the University of Michigan. Internet disputes over network neutrality may have played a role in that decision, and the administration may have "calibrated" some of its tech policy views since then.

But the real winner here is the Web, which continues to show its value with this sort of data. The Sunlight Foundation mashup has even added links to each entry on the visitor logs that connect to that person's federal election donations and Wikipedia pages, for those who want to do some extra sleuthing (Schmidt loves to spread his cash around, for instance, giving $15,000 to both the Democratic and Republican senate campaign committees in 2008).

There's a lot of data in these releases; the current dataset compiled by Sunlight has 29,351 entries and runs through October 2009. But the filtering and search tools make it easy to see everyone who, say, visited CTO Aneesh Chopra in March or had a visit with Obama himself. And they make it easy to "crowdsource transparency" by letting anyone with an Internet connection keep tabs on those who bend the ears of senior policy makers.

This look inside the White House comes courtesy of the Obama administration, which (eventually) released its visitor logs to the public after public pressure from good government groups. The Sunlight Foundation, which promotes transparency in government, has done a nice job of making the raw data accessible and searchable online, and Ars Technica ran through the visitor logs to see who was visiting President Obama's senior technology staffers.

And that's what's important right there. Groups willing to be our eyes and ears when we can't be there. Civic responsibility is important but we need help now and then.